American Art Collaborative

Thayer was born in the fashionable Back Bay, the daughter of a dean of the Harvard Law School, educated in prestigious girls' schools, and traveled widely with her mother. She studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and with Philip Hale, and Charles W. Hawthorne. In the mid-1920s in New York she led the life of a socialite much as that of an aspiring artist. She won the National Academy of Design's Hallgarten Prize for painting in 1929 with a large nude, Circles. Through the 1930s she showed frequently in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, and received numerous portrait commissions. Her repertory expanded to include landscapes. After her marriage to Daniel Starr she ceased her artistic career.